Skip to content

TRENDS Diary: Motivating each other to move

Personal stories shared during COVID-19
Lyn Schuman
Photo courtesy of Boulder County Community Foundation

TRENDS Diary is a place for Boulder County residents of all ages to share personal experiences that relate to a pressing community need. The focus, for now, is on our shared need to connect and solve problems, despite the increased isolation we're all experiencing during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Community Foundation of Boulder County publishes the TRENDS Diary and invites those who wish to tell their story to submit it here

Lyn Schuman Simuns used to have a very active life before the COVID-19 outbreak. Whether the Longmont resident was volunteering for Boulder County or for Intercambio teaching ESL classes, she was always on the go; but suddenly, in one week, everything stopped.

“I started to feel really isolated and was struggling myself to find the motivation to get out and be active, this situation is so unlike anything we’ve ever been through, so I started thinking, what can I do?” she said.

Simuns, a retired datacenter senior project manager, then created the virtual group “COVID-19 challenge: let’s walk off those 19 pounds that staying home are adding.” Participants have to accumulate individually the highest number of walking steps in a month to receive a monetary reward at the end.

“I thought, I am just going to put the challenge out there and see if we can help motivate and encourage each other in these uncertain times,” she said. “Sometimes, this is all you need, another person helping you get motivated.”

The challenge was open for everyone at the beginning and it was a coincidence that ultimately the group ended up being mainly Latinas who she met through her ESL classes at Intercambio, where she has been teaching for eight years. There are 12 wonderfully diverse Longmont women who are separately, yet together participating in the challenge.

“I’ve been so pleased to see that everybody needed this,” she said. “This is a way to feel that there are other people out there together with us even though we have to be separate.”

- Silvana Munro